Location from ice-age by
A dense, frost-laden forest of ancient pines that shelters migrating animals and serves as home territory for Ellie's possum family.
The Pine Forest is a refuge — dense enough to block the wind, old enough to have hollows and elevated roots that provide shelter. Possums thrive here, and other small mammals find the understory habitable when the open trail becomes untenable. Ellie and her brothers know every tree. As a setting, the Pine Forest provides contrast to the open, exposed terror of the glacier and the migration trail. Things can hide here. Things can also hide from you here. The scale shifts — the world becomes intimate rather than vast, which can feel like safety or like a different kind of danger.
The pines are enormous — old growth that has been here longer than the current cold snap, their bark thick and furrowed, their branches heavy with snow and ice. The forest floor is deep in dead needles frozen into the ground. Light filters through in pale, angled shafts. The forest smells of cold resin and something animal — a living smell, dense and layered.
Also known as: The Pine Forest, the forest, the pines